


Sandpipers

by emeraldarrows



Category: The Gallant Men
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, Extended Scene, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9524351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldarrows/pseuds/emeraldarrows
Summary: What we do in life echoes in eternity. This is Italy, WWII through the eyes of an angel.





	1. Sandpipers

_"Down at the beach one summer a bunch of kids and I found a sandpiper's nest. Had the worst fight I ever had in my life with a kid that wanted to take the eggs out of the nest." - D'Angelo, "The Crucible"_

"How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." - William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

It's summer the day they see the sandpiper's nest, he, and four other boys on the beach.

There's three speckled eggs nestled beneath the sea bird. His dark eyes are wide, awed with the discovery, the beauty of life wrapped in a hard shell and hidden from prying eyes. The bird spots them, getting to her feet and hopping away, dragging a wing behind her. He takes a step back to ease her worries.

One of the other boys reaches forward and starts to roll an egg out of the nest.

"What are you doing?"

He taps the egg. "For my collection."

There's fear in the mother bird's eyes as she chirps, dragging her wing slower, darting in front of them.

"No, put it back." his voice is harsh, as rough as a ten year old can sound.

The kid looks up. "Its just a stupid egg, Pete." He raises a foot to smash the nest and something within Pete breaks, like a band drawn too tight, wound to the breaking point.

"No!"

**He doesn't know how much longer they can hold on.**

Smith got it first, a bullet through the temple killing him in mid word. The replacement never knew what hit him.

Mac and Saunders were hit almost at the same time, the leg for one, side for the other. Nothing fatal as far as he could tell but neither could run or even walk to take out the machine gun nest that's tearing them to shreds.

He runs a hand over his face, drawing in a shuddering breath. That left Gibson, the green kid who went into shock the first time he saw someone shoot at them, the boy who blushed red to his hair-roots if he was within ten feet of a girl. He was huddled over the radio yelling the same words over and over.

"Apache 1, this is Apache 6, over!"

A barrage of bullets slam into the side of the foxhole and for a moment he's only aware of Gibson's cry of pain. He throws himself across the radio man as the grenade explodes, the shrapnel missing them by feet but jarring every bone in his body.

"Hey, kid!" He shakes the boy. "Gibson!"

Blue eyes flutter open weakly. "D'Angel.." A harsh cough cuts off his words and blood trickles from his mouth.

"Hang on, kid. You're gonna be okay."

"R-radio.." He chokes out.

D'Angelo casts a look behind him at the pathetic heap of twisted wires.

"It's all busted, Gibson."

More gunfire erupts and he looks over at the other wounded, Saunders out cold, the Sarge clenching his leg, face twisted in pain. Gibson's eyelids flutter, slipping closed.

"Gibson? Kid?" His fingers find a pulse, thready, but there. "Hold on, kid."

He fights with the skill of a ten year old who's grown up hard. The other boy is bigger, stronger.

An elbow gets him in the ribs, a fist to the right eye. His breath catches but he swings again, landing a blow to the boy's stomach. The kid kicks, a knee catching his nose and he feels the blood start running.

His vision is blurred, body on fire. But he throws all his strength forward into one punch, a fist into the boy's jaw.

And by the time their parents arrive and pull them apart, he has the boy down for the count.

**He tosses his empty gun back into the foxhole and reaches into his uniform. A single grenade. It's all he has; it will have to do the job.**

There's a stretch of open field in front of him, yards where they could cut him down. But he has to try. He touches the medal around his neck, the gold smooth against his calloused fingertips.

He only hesitates a second before he crawls over the foxhole. The machine gun turns his way, opening fire. And then, like a man with a deathwish, he stands up and runs to the next.

He wipes his sleeve across the blood trickling from his nose, wincing as it contacts the bruised eye.

He's lost three friends today, kids who don't understand why he'd fight for a nest full of eggs and a mangy bird. But it doesn't matter because beneath the pain his heart is singing.

He kneels and cups his hand gently around the egg that rolled away, returning it to the nest. Three eggs, unbroken and unharmed. The mother watches him from the water, eyes softening as she sees the touch of his hand.

She will not forget this day.

**He crawls forward, out of the foxhole, the mud scraping his jacket as he holds his left arm to his side, dragging it limply. His other hand clamps around the grenade in his pocket, holding his breath as he waits.**

A German peers over the top, staring at him as if calculating whether it's a wounded man or a ruse.

He pulls the pin, counting the seconds between his teeth as he waits. And then he raises up as the Germans open fire.

The bullet enters high, exiting in a spray of scarlet. The momentum throws him backwards, grenade rolling behind him.

He scrambles for it, black dotting his vision, fingers closing around the grenade. His good hand throws it, aiming toward the nest with all his fading strength.

He lets himself fall to the ground, chin slamming into the mud as he slides backwards into the foxhole and curls into himself. And in the instant before the world explodes he thinks he hears the call of a sandpiper.

_"Mama bird, Mama bird, with your broken wing. Lead them away or we'll never sing."_

He's dying, this one. He's come across an ocean and into the land of his heritage to fight for the country of his birth, the country her ancestors have lived in for centuries. There are so many like him, boys she ran alongside the beaches with, and swam in the same seas as the tide came in. The wound is no worse or better than their's, blood of the same hue.

But this one is different. She's never seen him but the story has been passed down, the quiet memory of a simple kindness shown by a roughened boy on a summer afternoon. This is the one, the one she owes her life to, as did the line before her. This one is...good.

He hasn't crawled an inch since the ground exploded, taking those who shot him with it. For the first moment after the explosion she'd seen the injured wing clench against the mud, but then it fell limp to his side. She thinks there's still a whisper of life left in him but doesn't know.

She calls again but he doesn't respond, lying still against the grime.

She swoops close, landing gingerly on the mud beside him, tapping her beak gently against his cheek. He's the color of the pale pebbles the children take from the shores but as she leans toward him she can feel the faint puff of air from his mouth as it ruffles her feathers.

In the distance she can hear human voices, ones not so gentle or loving as this one's. But hands, human hands that can make him whole.

She spreads her wings as wide as she ever has in her life, soaring above him in a rapid circle, a ring to keep out harm, to combat the scarlet ring around him, the blood smeared on her feathers from the touch.

She hears the first one's call, a harsh song. He comes over the ridge and toward the hole. She flies higher, staying above them and still circling. The man drops beside the good one, another running in behind him. Hands pull away his clothes, reach into the opening and fight to stop the flow. Another grabs his chest, his wrist, seeking the throb of his heart. Something comes out of the first human's pouch and he works it into the wound. She waits, heart pounding, as the crimson slows to a trickle, and finally stops.

And then, with a final call, she spreads her wings and flies away.

**"How is he?"**

The medic's face raises, a stranger's blood smeared on him, features lined with exhaustion.

"Hit an artery. I've got a clamp on it and we're giving him as much plasma as we've got." He shook his head, expression softening into wonderment. "If it wasn't for that bird, Captain, we'd never have seen him until it was too late."

Captain Benedict took off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. He'd seen it too, the sea bird flying low and in circles around the foxhole. They'd found D'Angelo in that hole, covered in grime, clothes peppered with shrapnel fragments, and a pool of blood spreading in an ever-widening circle around him. The soldier's olive-toned skin was chalk white, mouth tinged with blue.

It had taken the medic several seconds to find a pulse, and even longer to clamp down on the artery. Yet he still clung to life with the tenacity of a bulldog.

He knelt and brushed a matted lock of hair off the wounded man's forehead.

"What are his chances?"

"His pulse is getting stronger. If he doesn't start hemorrhaging again he should make it."

"Captain?" He turns toward the whisper and the figure on the other stretcher. "Yes, Gibson, I'm here."

He strained to focus. "Did you see...the bird?"

"I saw it."

"Never saw....anything like it." He caught his breath, than continued. "Like it was...protecting him."

Captain Benedict turns back in time to see black eyes flutter open, staring up toward the place where they'd last seen the bird. It was gone now, flying away as soon as the medics had stopped the bleeding.

"Maybe it was."

Somewhere in the distance there's the sound of another battle, another company, of men dying, of soldiers living against impossible odds. The bird rests on a tree nearby, watches the battle with a silent and ageless gaze.

The good one will live today. She has done all she can and the humans will do the rest. He will survive and her heart soars with a song that carries over the field of death, a song to soothe the wounded and dying, the perishing in body or heart.

She does not forget a kindness.


	2. From the Angel

_"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." - José Narosky_

The day he enters the army he's never been more than fifty miles away from Jersey in any direction and Italy is just a word in his parents' reminiscing, the reason he understands a second language.

Somewhere back in his memory he remembers a faded postcard of Salerno, a stretch of beach and nothing more. It's later when he runs onto that beach with a gun in his hands, bullets flying over his head, striking the men around him. He opens fire as another man shouts orders, and that day he kills his first enemy, a man that any other time he might be playing 21 with in a pool hall, a man who looks strangely like himself. Halfway through the battle the man giving orders falls dead, never even finishing the word he was saying, but the soldier keeps on firing until he doesn't see any more of the enemy. It isn't until they've pulled back from the beach that he realizes he doesn't know the officer's name anymore than he knows the men he shot.

The first Italian girl he kisses speaks no English and has never been outside her village. He treats her like glass, cupping her face lightly in calloused hands, brushing his lips to her's. She tastes of home and he spends the night telling her everything he remembers of Jersey, talking until he's hoarse to brand the fading memories into his mind. She listens quietly, and when morning comes she kisses his forehead and is gone as he slips back to rejoin his men. They bomb her village the next day and he wanders the rubble for hours but never finds her.

The day he holds a stranger in his arms it isn't a beautiful girl or a wounded soldier but a little child. They've bombed out her village, killed her friends. But while the adults of the town spit on his uniform, the child puts her arms around his neck and sings, in a clear, brave voice. He finds himself singing too, childish songs he'd thought long forgotten, and as they hold each other and the bombs fall he isn't sure who's comforting whom. When he leaves the town he promises to return but they don't go back that way again and he never knows if she survived the war.

The next soldier he shoots isn't the enemy but rather a man from his own squad, his best friend to be exact, and it's a fight over a girl who cares nothing for either of them. His friend isn't badly hurt and he says it's an accident but in the back of his mind he isn't sure. Two battles later his friend gets it and he sits in a foxhole holding his dead body for an hour before they tell him to let go. It isn't until he's scrawling his friend's name on a shell that he realizes he doesn't remember the girl's name or what she looked like.

The day he digs a grave it's for one of his friends, a man he won a month's pay from in last night's game. Its a muddy grave and the rain washes over the dead man's face as he lifts him into the hole. The soldier had a wife and kids back home and he wonders if his friend had lived if he'd have given the money back. He should say something over the grave but the words stick to the roof of his mouth and finally he turns and walks away.

The day he writes a letter home he fills it with everything he's seen, every man he's watched die, the bombs, the mines, the rubble, the destruction. Finally he re-reads it and it makes him sick. Sometime later he tears it up and writes another, a cheerful description of their card games that he always wins, and an acknowledgment that he still plays his music.

The day he steps inside a church it's been a month since he's been to confession. His face is reverent as he slides into the pew, bows his head and whispers his prayers, ready to cleanse his hands of some of the blood staining them. He's not even finished the "Our Father" when a German steps out of the shadows, firing and killing the man kneeling beside him, a man more devout than he. He grabs his gun and kills the German, watching in silence as the enemy tumbles across the altar and lies still. The next church he goes in he shoots into every corner, fires at the glass windows until they shatter. He doesn't pray, and it's only later that he realizes he forget to kneel as he passed the altar.

The day he's marked as wounded in action it isn't a clean bullet through him and waking up in a hospital surrounded by nurses like in the posters. Instead it's shrapnel that rips through his flesh as he shoves his Lieutenant out of the way and takes the full force of the grenade blast in his back. When he wakes up it's in a cold dark cell with a German doctor who pokes his wounds and twists the metal shards in deeper. Somewhere within the pain he drifts away, his last memory a naked lightbulb swinging from the ceiling like a broken star.

The day he finally wakes up he's wrapped in blankets and bandages, with tubes snaking in and out of his arms to feed him blood and liquid. His buddies come in to see him, to shake his hand. They call him "Pete" and it sounds strange to his ears. It's been so long since he's been anything but a single name, a last name that some of them can't even pronounce, or forget the spelling of.

The day he rejoins his group he finds his belongings marked with his full name and three letters: M. I. A. He scrubs the letters off but a trase of them stay. Everything is still there but his deck of cards is five short, all hearts. As he stuffs the stack back into the bag he faintly wonders if it's somehow symbolic.

The day he cries it's raining so hard that no one sees that it's tears running down his face, that he's blinded by them as he fires into the fading light, toward running men he can no longer identify as enemy or friend. He's lost no friend today, and the battle is a victory, so he doesn't know why he's crying. Somewhere within it all there must be a reason.

The day his guitar breaks he hasn't played it for three weeks, and he no longer remembers the words to the songs he sang. English and Italian are jumbled together into a single language in his head, words meaningless. He's reaching toward the man carrying the typewriter when the mine explodes, throwing him backwards against the trees. His first sight when the smoke clears is the twisted wood of his guitar mingled with the smashed typewriter, stained with blood he knows is not his own. This time he doesn't cry, doesn't make a sound. He gets up and walks past the bodies, to the living men still fighting, as the cries of the wounded and the shouts of the medics ring through ears long deafened by battle.

The day the war ends for him starts like any other day, rain and explosions. He feels himself running when the bullet rips through his chest, exiting his back in a spray of crimson that seeps into the mud around his boots as another tears through his left leg. He doesn't feel the pain until he's face down in the mud and blood, gasping for air. Somebody grabs him, drags him back off the front lines, towing him toward the medics. "Hang on, D'Angelo." He's tired, sick of war, sick of death. But the voice gives him an order and he obeys without questioning.

The day he gets his discharge he's on crutches and boarding a transport ship. All he owns in the world- a worn pack carrying half a deck of cards, a few rations, two months pay, and two purple hearts- is slung over his back. He's out of the war, one of the lucky ones they say. He survived, and he'll see home again.

It isn't until he's on the ship taking him to America that he realizes he doesn't remember what home looks like.


	3. Interlude

_"I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war." - Georges Clemenceau_

_"I read once of a little boy standing on a beach after a storm and throwing starfish back into the sea. A man came up to him and tried to discourage the child. After all, there were so many starfish on the beach, he couldn't possibly save them all, couldn't change the inevitable. But the child only smiled, looked at the starfish in his hand and put it back into the sea. "I made a difference for that one." He said."_

He couldn't remember how long he'd been walking. Less than twenty four hours he knew, only because the sun was still beating down against him, driving him on like a stone hand pressed to his back.

Twenty four hours ago they hadn't left on the patrol yet with seven men and a hand-drawn map that didn't show the mine that blew two of them up before they'd gone ten miles.

Or the machine gun nest that tore to bits four of them, leaving only he and the replacement, a green recruit who'd never before seen a day of combat in his life, and never lived to see another.

He'd been closest to the back, he and Goldman. His head shakes, trying to block out the memory of the kid huddled on the ground, arms wrapped around his stomach and the grisly river of blood running from the gaping hole.

His uniform is still stained with the private's blood, crimson mingled with the grime of the foxhole they'd crawled in, the hole where Goldman had died, screaming and clutching a little gold star around his neck until the chain shattered.

He'd left the star in the boy's slack fist, tucked the dogtag into his pocket and somehow made it out of there alive, running blindly back toward their lines, wiping the blood off his hands, off his face. 

And all he could say was a Catholic prayer for a Jewish boy, a kid who'd have wanted the Kaddish said over him. He hoped Goldman would understand.

He lands hard on his knees in the dirt, hand coming down on something warm. He jerks back, expecting a dead soldier. But it isn't an American or a German.

It's a tiny infant, wearing only a filthy diaper, and coated in mud and grime. Blood stains her whispy hair, and one fragile arm is bent at a harsh angle. He's seen hundreds of dead bodies, dozens of horrible wounds, but nothing that ever made him sick to his core. He wants to take the Germans that did this and strangle them with his bare hands, make them suffer for what they've done to an innocent little girl who should have been allowed to grow up, to go to parties and dances, to wear pretty dresses and date boys.

He kneels next to the motionless body and wipes the grime off the child's face with a gentle finger, stroking the still warm cheek. There's a faint twitch and the infant lets out a wail, face scrunching up in red misery. His breath catches.

The baby's good hand flails toward him as he rips off his jacket. It's splattered in Goldman's blood and covered in dirt but it's all he has. He's never held an infant before, much less one this small or injured but he does his best, lifting the tiny body into the uniform and wrapping her as best he can.

He works her up into the crook of his arm, her broken arm splinted with a sleeve of the jacket.

"I'm so sorry, little girl." His voice falters despite himself. "But don't worry, I'll get you back. You're gonna be okay."

The infant whimpers weakly, and he cups a hand, seemingly enormous against the frail child, around the uninjured arm, dirt-streaked fingers brushing away more of the grime, exposing the faintly tan, satin-soft skin.

He starts to walk in the direction he last remembers, boots scuffing in the drying mud, stones tearing at his pants' legs.

"I bet you have a pretty name, baby." His tone is hushed, as much to soothe the child as to not alert any Germans in the area. "I know your mama named you something pretty. Mine's Pete. Pete D'Angelo. Italian, just like you."

Dark eyes blink up at him, perfect clear eyes set into the child's face, fixed with a wisdom as if she can understand his babbling.

"You like music, baby? I bet you do. Every Italian likes music."

She closes her eyes, head turning toward him.

"Old MacDonald had a farm, e i e i o, and on that farm he had a cow..." He's more whispering than truly singing but the child seems to take to the melody, face smoothing out in semi-peaceful sleep.

She's so beautiful, so delicate that his heart tears inside, for her and for the world she'll grow up in.

Bleeding heart, he's been called. He sheds his blood for his country but his heart bleeds for the people, for the homeland that might have been his if his parents hadn't left those years before.

Somebody else might just leave the baby and go on. But he can't, for to leave the child would be like leaving half of himself, leaving his decency, his humanity in the mud of Italy.

He stumbles, suddenly weak. He can't remember the last time he ate, but he can't pause to find food. The child needs medical help. He tries to get up and fails. He hasn't slept in three days and he doesn't have to guess to know he's on the verge of collapse. 

One hour. He'll sleep one hour and then go on.

When he wakes it's morning, a day since Goldman died. The child is still alive, lying small and fragile in the crook of his arm, huddled against him. There's still blood staining the jacket, covering his shirt and soaking into his skin. It must have run off the baby onto him.

He starts to sit up and a wave of dizziness sends him flat on his back, gasping for air. He fights to gain his senses and slowly, painfully, crawls to his feet, tugging the bundle with him.

He loses track of how far he walks. He passes stones that all look the same, rubble of buildings too alike to even tell if he's still headed the right way. The sun beats down mercilessly and by noon the back of his neck is burnt red.

He fights his way up a little hill and down the other side, tripping over rocks and nearly falling more times than he can count until he finally finds shapes in the distance, tents and tanks, all emblazed with taped stars, humming with American voices.

His vision is faltering, blackened around the edges and faded with exhaustion, but he makes out a familiar shape - Lucavich, B.A.R. in hand, standing guard.

He stumbles forward, going down on his knees, baby clenched in trembling hands.

Somewhere in the distance Lucavich shouts and a chorus of voices join in, followed by hands that grab his arms. One pair reaches for the infant and he digs his fingers into the jacket, doubling over across the child in an effort to hold on to the tiny form.

"Let go, Pete. Let them help." The voice is familiar. He struggles to place it, only registering that he trusts the owner of it.

"Conley?" He means to shout but it comes out as a rough whisper.

"Yes, Pete, let go."

His fingers go slack, hand slipping from it's death grasp. A set of arms catch the tiny bundle as another pair lower him gently to the ground.

"Medic! Get some plasma over here, quick!!" It's Captain Benedict's voice, harsh and worried. The baby must be hurt worse than he thought and he struggles to sit back up.

"Lie still, D'Angelo."

"But wha..?" 

His hand wavers in front of his face, chalk white and splashed with Goldman's blood, the crimson stark against the paleness. But it couldn't be Goldman's blood, not after a full day, not warm and dripping between his fingers. For the first time he feels the pain start through him, like a match's fire licking at paper.

"Easy, D'Angelo. Lie still."

His eyes, blurred like staring through a dirty window, drift to the bundle in Conley's arms, the slightly moving and whimpering bundle of a tiny but strong survivor. The faintest smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, a fragile whisper of relief and joy.

And then, like a switch thrown on a dark night, all the lights go out.

The sun is shining through the flaps of the tent when he opens his eyes and finds himself in a cot with heavy blankets draped over him.

There's an IV trailing from a rifle butt to his arm, steadily dripping clear liquid into his veins. He makes out a figure sitting in the corner.

"Conley?" His voice sounds oddly weak, even to his own ears. The reporter's head comes up from his notepad, a smile easing away the lines etched into his face.

"Sleeping Beauty's finally awake. The men were starting to think you'd decided to sleep away the rest of the war."

D'Angelo fingers search beneath the covers, finding the bandages wrapping his back around to the front.

"How bad is it?"

"You're a lucky man. You'll be going to the rear for a while until you're well. You can give the nurses something to worry about."

He doesn't smile. His eyes drift past the correspondent, searching the tent.

"The kid?" He asks quietly. "Did the kid make it?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?" Conley pulls the curtain aside behind him, exposing another row of makeshift beds.

The child is lying on a cot that dwarfs her tiny frame, one hand spread to the side beneath a plaster cast, the other pressed to her cheek. She's clean and swathed in bandages around her head, still and quiet, but he can see the steady rise and fall of her chest.

"She came out of danger an hour after you did." Conley's voice is hushed as if there's a holiness to the moment that shouldn't be broken, like a devout man kneeling in prayer in a church. "By the time you're on your feet she'll be with the nuns in San Pietro. They'll find a home for her."

It's such a small thing. Six men die, men with families, wives and children, people praying, hoping for them to get home safe. A boy died without the proper prayers, a hundred miles from a home he'll never see again. And an infant, buried in the mud of Italy, without a friend in the world, survives. But for some reason his heart is comforted, as if the tiny life is somehow hope embodied, one life to begin to heal the gap in the world left by six.

"She's a survivor." D'Angelo whispers. He doesn't trust his voice.

A faint smile crosses the older man's face.

"You both are."

_And so, another day, another brief moment, an interlude in war. The life of a child, the life of a soldier, seemingly insignificant and quickly forgotten. But as the little boy with the starfish believed, perhaps it's how you see such an interlude that matters. Perhaps it's not the heroic and sweeping deeds of masses that change the world, but the small ones. He made a difference for a single life, and that one makes a difference for another. A ripple, spread from inch to inch until all the water is stirred. And all humanity is made the better for it._


	4. Tomorrow

_"We did not fight a conventional war; we fought a dirty war, one without uniforms, POW camps or rules laid down by the Geneva Convention. We slept under a starry sky at night…we lived in fear of being discovered by the enemy, of Nazi reprisals among our population and close family, and of betrayal within our own ranks." - unidentified Italian partisan soldier, WWII_

As far back as he could remember, Amitore had thought of life as a wheel.

You were born into a cold, crowded world, growing up fighting for your land, your life, your sanity. Somewhere in the middle you married, gave birth to children, toiled at the land, scraped and saved. And eventually, old and tired, you died, body lowered into the earth you'd wept and bled for, as your children took their turn at the wheel. Nothing interrupted the cycle.

The war changed that concept. War had no respect for the young, the fragile, the weak. Hardened battle veterans and young recruits alike, it killed indiscriminately, leaving a bloody trail in it's wake. It stole all that was left of his home and family, leaving him with only one thing, Elena. She was all he had, and he could be content with nothing else. And then the wheel gave one final turn, handing him the short straw, the fall of the lot, sending him to murder a man and die himself.

He'd accepted it without protest, as he had everything he'd gone through. There was some resentment toward the American, he supposed, some flicker of anger that stirred within him when he saw Elena tenderly caring for him, attempting to patch his wounds with their meager supplies. Killing him seemed simple, another mission in the midst of a war in which he'd killed so many without even thinking twice about it. And dying...he'd forgotten how to live long ago.

But those hours within the cell, with the man lying there, half out of his mind with fever yet still trying to help him, believing him a prisoner as well, had shaken him to the core, left him questioning everything he'd believed in.

For the first time he questioned the senseless waste of lives, the slaughter that they commit every day. The Germans he can attempt to rationalize. They have no way of keeping prisoners, of feeding or holding them. A bullet is easier, one less enemy who will later slit your throat.

But to throw away their own lives, to kill an American, a man fighting for the same cause, is wrong. He can't justify what he almost did, the guilt pressing down on him like a giant weight suspended over his shoulders, threatening to crush him to death.

The American - D'Angelo, he amended -had been badly wounded after all. He'd seen the shrapnel fragments embedded in his back, arm, and leg, observed the agony etched into the man's face. Even as the German doctor prodded the wounds and threatened him with amputation as the infection spread, he had said nothing, not given anything away. And in the throes of his delirium, as he begged for morphine, he had never once cried out to the Germans. Always, his eyes were on Amitore, as if the partisan could pull the drug out of thin air.

There was an open decency in D'Angelo that he'd begun to doubt the existence of in his fellow human beings. Even suffering as he was, the soldier had dragged himself to Amitore, managing to get water down him before falling limply beside him, too weak to continue.

Amitore had had the moments between the explosion and when the soldiers and the partisans broke down the cell door to think, to consider as he knelt beside the wounded man, watching the faint rising and falling of his chest, the only movement marking the man as alive. He'd watched it, as if looking could urge it to continue, to keep up it's ragged rhythm until his rescuers came. For the first time Amitore felt a stirring of compassion within him, a desire to help instead of harm, to repair some of the hurt in his country instead of killing more people. He wanted this man to live.

And then the door had opened and Elena had been there, throwing arms around him, and he was alive, feeling her in his arms, feeling death walk away from him.

They had left that cell together, he running with Elena beside him, D'Angelo carried on a soldier's back, limp and seemingly lifeless. He'd held out little hope for the man's chances at first, but the medic's cautiously confident expression and the worry on the soldiers' faces infused him with a trace of belief that the private would recover. If a man had friends willing to risk so much for the possiblity of rescuing one man, surely the man couldn't simply die so shortly afterwards, without knowing that they'd not abandoned him, that they'd been willing to die to get him out. Whatever strength of will that had kept him alive that night in the darkness before they found him, whatever had carried him this far, could not fail him now.

His stomach had twisted as he watched them lift and load the man into the jeep. D'Angelo was still unconscious, fragile threads of his mind breaking under the weight of the agony, head falling painfully forward. They paused to tuck the blankets around him to cushion the wounded limbs, before driving toward the field hospital. 

All the time they traveled and even as the medics carried the stretcher into the tent that served as an operating room, D'Angelo made no sound, lost somewhere within the suffering. Amitore followed behind the squad, watching silently with them as the doctor cut away the private's clothes and the medics lifted him onto the operating table.

He waited outside the tent while the doctor worked, digging out the shrapnel, and attempting to halt the spreading infection. Finally they carried him out and the squad came quietly inside, heads bowed as they waited for the verdict, the sentence of death or the whisper of life to come from the doctor's lips.

It's later when Captain Benedict comes out to light a cigarette and pauses to tell him that the soldier is alive, that he'll keep the arm and leg, and he'll heal in time. He'll bear scars to his dying day, but he'll be whole.

Amitore enters the hospital tent, sharp eyes quickly finding the cot to his right. The soldier looks strangely smaller beneath the blanket, arm and leg wrapped in bandages, more dressings wrapped around his chest to protect the wounds in his back. He notes the man's color has improved, eyes following the IVs trailing to his arm, one feeding plasma, the other morphine that has finally taken the lines of pain from the soldier's face.

Amitore steps closer and the man opens his eyes slowly, the black flickering across him for a long second before recognition dawns and he gives a weak and somewhat drugged smile.

He reaches into his pocket and withdraws the noose, laying it wordlessly on the cot, fingers outstretched, resting on the cold wire, feeling the apathy of it, the makeshift weapon that he nearly stole this man's life with. He lifts his head, waiting for the anger to fill the eyes watching him.

It takes a moment for D'Angelo to realize the significance of the object beside him.

"That close?" His voice is just above a hoarse whisper, tone unreadable.

"I heard the explosion. It stopped me." He won't say he was inches from the man's throat, scant seconds away from choking the life out of him, a mere movement from effortlessly ripping away the weak hand that reached up to stop him.

There's silence between them and finally D'Angelo brings his good hand over and fingers the wire.

"I remember the water." He says quietly. "During the pain."

"You gave me water when they first brought me in." Amitore drops his eyes back to the noose. "It was the first kindness I had been shown since the war began. I but repaid it." His head lifts, chin firm. "I would not have taken pleasure in the killing."

He finds no bitterness in the dark eyes, no hatred, only a strange understanding, a knowing that when the Germans returned they would have found not one but two bodies, the wounded man strangled, the other having calmly and quietly hung the noose from the ceiling, wrapped it around his own neck, and stepped off the edge of the cot.

"Its over, then. Forgotten."

He extends his hand, fingers faintly trembling. Amitore studies the offered hand before accepting it, nod stiff and firm. They will never meet again but he feels that he has somehow found a lifelong friend in this stranger, this American soldier. With a forgiving look D'Angelo has taken away all the pain within him, set him free, and given him a new life.

He watches as the man's eyes close, his body slipping into peaceful and healing sleep. He stares down at the noose for only a moment before dropping it to the ground and crushing it beneath his boots. The wire snaps.

He shoulders his gun and starts out of the hospital.

He stops at the flap of the tent and looks back at the man, alive, resting now, and the noose lying broken on the floor beside his cot. He looks down at his hands, strong and firm, stained with the blood of past killings, and finds them clean, as if a single forgiveness has washed away all the rest. His step is lighter, shoulders unburdened for the first time since the war began, since everyone and everything but Elena was taken away from him.

She's waiting outside the tent, waiting for him, hand outstretched, reaching. He places his hand around her's, fingers fitting together, entwining, strong, unbreakable. Elena smiles at him, a promise, a vow written in her eyes. No matter what happens and where they are tomorrow she'll stand by him.

He doesn't know how the war will end, whether the soldier inside will survive it, whether he or Elena will be alive to see it end. But for the first time it no longer haunts him. He feels alive and _free_ , with the forgiveness draped across his shoulders, lifting up some of the weight of the weapon, and her love curled around his arm. For the first time he will face tomorrow without fear.

The first rays of dawn creep over the horizon, an Italian sunrise brushing the land, washing away the day before as it bathes the hills in gold. It's a fresh day, promising hope, and he sees it with new and open eyes.

They walk into the morning together.


	5. When the Snow Was Falling

_"Why were you born when the snow was falling? You should have come to the cuckoo's calling, or when grapes are green in the cluster, or, at least, when lithe swallows muster." - Christina Rossetti_

His eyes crack open in the dim moonlight, catching on a pale streak filtering through the slats of the truck and bathing his surroundings.

It takes D'Angelo a moment to remember and then the battle returns, the memory of Captain Benedict's yell of "Go!", the crunch of snow beneath his boots, the feel of Gibson stumbling against him as they scrambled away.

He doesn't know if anyone else made it, if they're still out there, or if they're ahead of them, having managed to find a faster means of transport. He only knows he and Gibson are still alive, a fragment of their squad still struggling against the enemy.

Days like these he no longer remembers before the war, for it seems as if there's been nothing else forever.

He's forgotten manners, pleasantries, even the longing to see a pretty girl's face. The pain of hunger has faded to a dull ache, the desperate longing for sleep no longer plaguing him. Even his music is gone, melodies drifting from his head as his memories filled with gunshots and the metallic scent of blood and explosions.

He remembers faintly that its been six weeks since he wrote a letter home, the page or more of words he promised his mother he'd never forget. Its getting harder to remember her face, the warmth of her hands, the smell of her cooking. His sisters and brothers must be growing every day, he won't even recognize his baby sister if _when_ he returns. He's too weary to write home, hands too stiff to grasp a pen even if he had one. He's hollow, used up beyond the point of endurance, given all that he had inside.

His arms are wrapped around Gibson, the boy's head resting on his shoulder, their limbs tangled together. He's grown accustomed to stealing sleep whenever he can, resting across other soldiers, even among the dead in a trench in the darkness. Personal space means little in the midst of a war, basic survival taking presidence over a more reclusive personality.

His mind registers that the private is even whiter than before, patches of frostbite creeping on his too thin face. Too little food, even less sleep, and the boy is failing. They're all too weary to go on much longer.

He sits upright stiffly, hands numb with the cold, managing to shake Gibson's shoulder. The young private twitches, followed by a shiver, too cold to groan. But he's still alive, not frozen to death like some of the less fortunate soldiers out in the wasteland.

The road curls upward and he sees the aftermath of another battlefield, bodies strewn here and there, snow spread like a blanket over them. It's pointless he knows but he calls out to the driver anyway, asking him to stop while he checks for survivors. It's instinct, basic training to search for life.

He climbs down like an ancient old man, touching first one stiff body and then the next, brushing snow off a white face and watching for any sign of breath. Too late. Much too late.

He feels something grab his boot and jerks, eyes darting down to the creature perched precariously between his ankle and the toe of his boot.

It's a tiny kitten, only a few weeks weaned, dark fur brushed with snowflakes. The pitiful creature huddles against him, seeking warmth, little mouth opening in a cry that the wind whips away.

He bends and lifts the animal, cupping it's small body within the hollow of his hands. It shivers, then nestles into his fingers. It's alone, lost and frightened, so much akin to the men still out there somewhere, so much like himself.

He tucks the kitten inside his jacket, nose peeking out for air, a hand folded across the fabric, and trudges back across the crackling snow to the truck.

He climbs in, giving a quiet word to the driver, and the truck rumbles on.

Gibson's eyes open, struggling to focus.

"Sssurvivors?" The word comes out around a painful chattering of teeth and he slides close to the boy, sharing body heat.

"One." He guides Gibson's hand to his pocket, and as the boy's fingers brush the ball of fur it lets out a surprisingly loud purr.

"Odd." He says faintly. "A kitten surviving when..." His voice trails off.

"Yeah."

D'Angelo's fingers find the fur, tangle gently around the warmth as little paws come up to push against the calloused fingertips, tiny and cold nose snuggling against the human contact.

It's a strong creature, he can tell, a survivor despite everything. When they get back he'll feed the kitten, tuck it against him, and they'll make it through the night together. He takes his free hand and pulls Gibson against his chest, wrapping the arm around him to steady the boy as the truck moves inch by inch through the swirling snow. When they get back, there will be food and sleep and warmth. For now he'll stay awake for all of them, watching and waiting. They'll make it.

He puts his frozen, numbed lips firmly together and starts to hum.


	6. A Day In August

_"When I was a child, the grown-ups sometimes muttered among themselves about 'What happened at Sant'Anna di Stazzema'. They said it with the complicity of adults into which children were not admitted ... but what was it that happened? I asked the grown-ups, my parents, my uncle, my aunt. And they didn't reply." - Antonio Tabucchi_

I suppose, even as a child, I sensed a cloud over my father's head. He was a gentle man, my papa, a man who loved life, a man of laughter, and music in his soul. But every August something would come over him...a strange sort of darkness.

He would go up to the attic, to the trunk we never opened, and stay there for hours, just staring at it and whatever lay within. Sometimes I'd see tears in his eyes, and sometimes when he held me so tightly I knew he was thinking of something or someone else, a hundred miles away.

You see, my papa was a part of the Greatest Generation, or so it's called, the young men who fought in the second world war. He served in Italy in the darker days of the war, part of the first wave on Salerno. Like many others he never spoke of what he saw there but I can imagine. Few of that first wave survived.

He met my mother in Italy, a girl who visited the hospitals and saw him, wounded. Mama told me once that they hadn't expected him to live, but she had prayed, had held his hand through the worst, and listened to days and nights of feverish dreams. The war ended while he fought for life and when he woke her face was the first thing he saw.

I thought it romantic as a child and even acted it out with my dolls. But now, as an adult, I realize how much Papa must have suffered. Some of the men in his squad came back missing arms and legs, one even blinded. Some never came home at all.

I was grown before he let me see the trunk. I couldn't make sense of most of it. There was a pair of dice, the painted dots faded and the ivory chipped, and a battered and incomplete deck of cards. There was a faded dollar bill in the bottom and when I asked all he said was "the last rent he paid me." with an odd and sad smile. There was a St. Christopher medal on a chain, and a purple heart in it's box. I found a newspaper on the side, with a picture of Papa, looking young and handsome, the way he must have looked when Mama and he were married. I found a couple photographs too, of an older man with a broad smile, a young captain, and another officer with a quiet expression, standing beside two men sitting on the steps of an old Italian church. There was a lighter haired man, older than Papa had been, and in front, grinning ear to ear, was a young soldier, little more than a tow-headed boy. And then Papa, guitar in his hand, black eyes staring out of the picture.

He told me their names once, softly, with reverence. I touched their faces in the photograph, learned each one as if I'd known them too...from Hansen who spoke German, who disappeared in a battle and was missing in action for days only to turn up unharmed and with a bottle of wine under his arm, to young Gibson who held onto communications under heavy fire, risking his life to get help for the squad, but couldn't bear to watch an enemy be killed.

When Papa was very old he started talking more about the war, of his friends, and even of the battles. But never what had happened one day in August.

And after a while I stopped asking.

**August 12, 1944.**

_August, 1944. Days of endless fighting have worn the men beyond endurance. They hardly look human now, thin and drawn, bearing the mud of a country they've fought for, inch by painful inch._

In their eyes are images of war, of loss, filling them up, choking the life out of them. It's painful to look at them, impossible to look away.

I think we all have seen too much.

It starts like any other day, warm, endlessly long, and waiting. The orders to move come in around noon and the men, streaked with a week's worth of dust and dirt, bone weary, and on short rations, march across another stretch of land beneath the dispassionate Italian sun.

They go toward a little town, Sant'Anna di Stazzema. A tiny village that any other day they might have passed and not noticed, forgotten as quickly as they came. But it's not any other day, and none of them will ever forget.

There's a scent in the air, a strange smell that they'll remember until their dying day. Smoke and death in the summer air.

They see it as soon as they enter the town, standing in the shadow of a charred cross on a broken church steeple.

"Dear God in heaven." In years later Captain Benedict never remembers that the words came from his own mouth, only the horror frozen into the faces of his men as they stare at the blackened pile around them.

It takes him several seconds to identify the charred and twisted mass as human and when recognition comes a wave of nausea claws at his throat. Behind him he can hear the sound of retching as Gibson loses his C-rations. Hansen and Lucavich stand silent and white faced, grins and joking cut off as if severed by a knife, leaving them expressionless. Hansen's hand is twisted into Ernie's sleeve and he makes no effort to remove it. Kimbro wipes a shaking hand across his mouth, face unnaturally pale.

Only D'Angelo takes a step forward, then another, and a third, until he's surrounded by the charred corpses. He bends, touches one - an infant, lying tossed like a broken doll on the pile. He rises slowly, as if an aged man, standing stiff like a severed tree in the instant before it falls.

Everywhere they turn there's more dead, hundreds, men, women, and children, bodies ripped apart by knives, bullets, and shrapnel. Civilians, murdered in cold blood.

"Captain." Gibson whispers hoarsely. Benedict's head raises, eyes staring past the field of death and into the center of the pile, at the small shape crawling from beneath. A boy, no more than six, clothes torn, blood staining his skin like spilled wine. He takes a stumbling step forward, black eyes hollow in his face.

He stops somewhere between the dead and the living, empty and aged gaze meeting the soldiers'. His mouth opens but no sound comes out, arms reaching forward in a silent plea.

And then D'Angelo is running, falling on his knees in front of the child and crushing him against his jacket. Tiny hands come up, twine in the folds of the fabric, and finally grip around his neck in a strangle hold. D'Angelo is speaking, half sobbing, half yelling, words tangled together, a mixture of Italian and English, curses and soothing sounds. His eyes are wide, as hollow as the child's. He doesn't even know he's screaming.

After a while he falls silent, face buried against the silent child. Kimbro gently touches the boy, searching for wounds but the blood doesn't seem to be the child's. The boy is silent and motionless, numb, clinging only to D'Angelo and not responding to the whispered Italian words.

He stands and gathers the child up in his arms, carrying him away from the corpses.

There's no time to bury the dead, or even make a cross over them. The devout among them whisper fragile prayers, and D'Angelo slowly crosses himself with his free hand, still holding the child in his other arm.

They set out again, the boy on D'Angelo's back, little legs and arms clenched around him like an orphaned monkey. None of them speak, eyes staring off into the fading day. Kimbro lights a cigarette but only holds it, examining it as if he's never seen one before. Finally he stamps it out, a fading ember in the battered ground behind them.

It's dark by the time they reach a field with trenches dug by the squad before them. There's still dead men lying in some of them but they sit down anyway, the child cradled in D'Angelo's arms. He pulls out his meager rations and divides them, 2/3 for the boy, a third for himself. The little dark head stays pressed into his uniform, resting against the medal beneath the cloth as if drawing comfort from it. He hums softly, an Italian lullaby from his childhood and the boy's breathing evens out, eyes closing in sleep.

He's bone weary and starting to nod off himself when Gibson jerks upright next to him and he sees the flash of a knife in the darkness. The child starts, clinging to him as he rolls with a yell, and Lucavich kills the enemy. Then there's more, running out of the darkness beneath the dim light of a weary moon.

He carries the child into a stand of trees, sets him down and pushes him back. "Don't move."

He runs back to the men, ignoring the screams of dying men he can't identify as friend or enemy in the darkness, killing the nearest German before he puts a knife in Hansen. It's over quickly, one of their's dead, a man he barely knew, and six Germans. He goes back to the clearing, calling in a harsh whisper for the boy.

The child stands up and he starts forward at the same instant a German steps into the clearing. There's a sudden flash in D'Angelo's eyes, a strange light of an otherworldly knowledge..the knowing a man has seconds before his life ends. And then there's the crash of undergrowth as the child runs forward, between D'Angelo and the German, between the guns.

"No!"

There's no hesitation as the German squeezes the trigger, no regret in his eyes as the lead exists and cuts the air between them. There's piercing silence, deafening in magnitude, only an instant as a breath is inhaled, as a ribbon of red streaks out and falls to the ground, soaking into the earth, followed by the unbearably loud sound of more guns exploding as bullets rip through the German. He jerks, twisting grotesquely, arms thrown outward like a puppet with it's strings tangled. And then he falls lifeless to the ground, outflung hand inches from the child lying motionless and broken and still.

Though it all there's the sound of someone screaming, a sound that never ends, an almost animalistic howl of agony. It isn't until Lt. Kimbro wraps his arms around D'Angelo and holds him back that he realizes the sound is coming from his own mouth.

**August 13, 1944**

"They did everything they could." Conley's voice is achingly gentle. "There was too much damage. If it's anything, Pete, he didn't suffer."

The man against the tree says nothing. His face is set in stone, body rigid. Only his hands move, twitching around the rim of the helmet clenched in tight fingers as if they have a life of their own.

"Pete?"

His face lifts slightly, looks toward the older man.

"Why, Conley?" His voice is scraped hoarse, the words frail. "Tell me why."

He's seeking answers, understanding, anything that will allow him to comprehend yesterday, the death, the horror they've witnessed, the loss of a little survivor they barely got time to know. But most of all he's seeking an answer as to why a group of men walked into a town on a day in August and murdered over 500 people without a passing regret.

So Conley says the only answer he can.

"I don't know, Pete. I don't think I ever will."

_An estimated 560 men, women, and children, including a 20 day old infant, were blown up with grenades or machine gunned to death August 12, 1944, after which the bodies and village were burned. While the fire raged the soldiers sat on the hill overlooking Sant'Anna and ate their lunch. A few people survived, huddled beneath the bodies and escaping after the soldiers had left. Overall it's estimated that the German army (including common soldiers, not just the Nazis) murdered 7,500 or more Italian civilians during WWII. Six of the men part of the division who committed the massacre are still living in Germany. One of the men, Gerhard Sommer, in a 2002 interview, stated "I have an absolutely pure conscience."_


End file.
